The Last Exit to Normal (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

T
he deer-hanging house next door had two occupants living in it, and
I’d met Norman Hinks. I hadn’t met his son, Billy, other than saying hello from my window, and over
the last week I’d seen him around, but he avoided looking at me.

Billy worked. Not like chores an eleven-year-old would do. I’m talking work work. Like all-day,
everyday work. He mowed with a hand mower, weeded, painted, hammered, hauled, hung laundry, watered,
cleaned—you name it, he did it.

Billy Hinks was a forty-year-old redneck stuck in an eleven-year-old’s body, and I
couldn’t get enough of watching the kid from my bedroom window. Big head, skinny neck, big buckteeth,
too-small clothes, and a crazy, wild-eyed look in his eyes—he was gangly and awkward and moved like all the
right parts fired in all the wrong ways. He got around, though, and there was a kind of clumsy grace in the way he did it,
like he’d learned how to deal with being a spaz.

Several days earlier, I’d watched from my window as Mr. Hinks skinned, sectioned, and
quartered the deer. I couldn’t help but watch as he worked the knife over the carcass and explained to Billy in
not-so-nice terms how to do it.

The cool part was watching Mr. Hinks saw the head off, skin it, pop the eyeballs out, get a big propane
burner from the garage, and boil the meat and brains from the skull. It was like having a front-row seat to a Hannibal
Lecter carnival. Three days later, he’d tacked skull and antlers to the wall above the garage, with the fourteen
others hanging there like long-lost brothers welcoming another sibling to the realm of deer death.

Norman Hinks had lived next door to Miss Mae since he was born, which meant Edward and he had been
neighbors. Mr. Hinks inherited the house when his mother died, and hadn’t stepped a foot outside the state of
Montana his entire life. He waved and said hello in a distant, dutiful way to Edward every time he saw him, but he
ignored my dad and me like we didn’t exist. Edward told me it was because we were outsiders. I avoided Mr.
Hinks because I didn’t want him to boil the brains out of my skull and tack me up on the garage wall.

Billy was another story, though. I’d watched Mr. Hinks drape a towel around Billy’s
neck in the backyard and shave his blond bristles down to the nubbins. When Billy flinched at getting his ear nipped with
the clippers, Mr. Hinks cuffed him on the side of the head and told him to sit still. Billy sat still from then on.

After having the get-to-know-you meeting with the sheriff, I got home and Billy was raking grass
clippings. At four o’clock, it was still over a hundred degrees. He wore Levi’s and a long-sleeved shirt,
and it struck me that cowboys and loggers and all country-type men in general didn’t wear shorts. It could be
two hundred degrees out, and unless you were actively swimming, you wore pants.

Billy stopped raking when I skated up to the house. Edward and Dad, as usual for two as-yet-unemployed
guys, were sitting on the front porch, drinking lemonade and watching the world go by like they’d been born to
this kind of living. Edward wore a straw hat, and my dad wore jeans. They were like a cross between
Mister
Rogers’ Neighborhood
and some cheesy country music video.

Billy’s stare bugged me out. The kid had alien eyes, and that big head bobbing on his pencil neck
weirded me out even more, and that’s why I couldn’t stop watching him. I kicked the board up, grabbed
it, and looked at him: “Hi.”

“I ain’t supposed to talk to you.”

I shrugged. “ ‘Ain’t’ isn’t a word.” I kept walking.

After a moment, he called to me. “I had a skateboard once, you know. Got it at a garage sale for
two bucks.”

I turned around. “I thought you weren’t supposed to talk to me.”

He looked at the handle of the rake, studying the grain of the wood like there was a secret message in it.
“Just sayin’.”

“Still got it?”

He shook his head. “Broke.”

“What, a truck or something?”

He looked at me, his brow furrowed.

“That’s one of the wheel parts. Underneath.”

“No. The wood part.”

I knew how difficult it was to break a wooden deck. You had to slam something hard enough to break
bones most of the time. “You jump off the roof with it or something?”

He shook his head. “No.”

Just then the screen door opened and Mr. Hinks came out. He didn’t look at me; his eyes were on
Billy. “I told you I don’t want you talking to nobody over there, and I meant it. Now get yourself done
with your chores and come inside.” Then the door slammed shut.

Billy looked at me, shrugged almost like he was saying sorry, and went back to raking. I looked at the
house, then at my dad, who gave me a blank look, then at Billy for a second more. He ignored me. “Bye,
Billy.” No answer. I walked up to the porch, set my board down, and grabbed the pitcher of lemonade, pouring
myself a glass. If there was anything I liked about country living, it was the lemonade and home-cooked dinners, and
Miss Mae always had plenty of both. “That was nice.”

Dad looked at Billy. “He’s just doing as his father tells him, Ben.”

“Did Hitler have kids?”

Dad rolled his eyes. “Leave them alone, Ben.”

Edward gave a wry smile. “When the voice of the Lord speaks . . .”

I cocked an eye at him. “What?”

Edward laughed. “Mr. Hinks isn’t really
Mr.
Hinks. He’s
Pastor
Hinks.”

I looked over at their house. “That guy is a pastor?”

“Yes. Pentecostal. But he hasn’t ministered for years. He’s a car auctioneer
now.”

“Pentecostal?”

Edward nodded. “The ones who speak in tongues and believe in demon possession.
Fire-and-brimstone stuff.”

Dad shot Edward a glance. “Care to generalize about anything else, Edward? Not all
Pentecostals are that way.”

“Maybe he thinks I’m a demon,” I said.

Edward took a sip. “Whatever makes you think you aren’t?”

I rolled my eyes. “So the good pastor must think all work and no play for his kid is
divine.”

Dad, ever the optimist, nodded. “People do things differently, Ben, and as far as I’m
concerned, there’s nothing wrong with teaching your child a work ethic.”

Edward laughed. “Come now, Paul, are you referring to your son? Why, if Ben were ever to
work a full day in his life, he’d need electroshock therapy to bring him out of it.”

Dad shook his head. “I think Ben could use some work.”

“Oh God.” I looked at Edward, who nodded agreement.

Dad smiled. “Miss Mae insisted, and I agree. Go look on the refrigerator.”

I walked inside. Miss Mae gave me the stinkeye, just on general principle, when I came into the kitchen.
She was so good at the stinkeye that even if you hadn’t done something wrong, you felt like you did. She had an
apron on and was preparing what looked like a big hunk of mushed guts on the counter. “Get that dish
down.”

“Do you ever say ‘please’?”

She wagged a finger above the sink, ignoring me. “The one with the blue on it.”

I didn’t move. “Say ‘please.’ ”

She stopped mushing the meat, then raised her eyes from the counter. “Come over here.”

Even though she wasn’t holding a spoon, I knew she’d do just fine with her knuckles,
and I was sick of it. “No.”

She took a step toward me, and we stared at each other. She set her jaw. “You’ve got
some things to learn, boy. Now get that dish and get it now, because you don’t want to make me
mad.”

“You’re always mad.”

“Woman my age has the right to be anything she wants.” She slid a stepstool to the
cupboard and got the dish herself. “Call your father in here.”

“Why?”

She turned on me, her eyes blazing. “If I had a mind I’d take a belt to your behind and
strap you until you bled.” She turned around, mumbling something about me not having a mother, then hollered
to my dad on the front porch.

Dad came in, and of course was oblivious to the tension humming in the air like a bass speaker. He
looked at the food. “Mmm. Meat loaf, Miss Mae?”

She nodded, then gestured to me. “He ain’t having any.”

I looked at her. “I’m not?”

She shook her head, her eyes meeting my dad’s. “I will not tolerate insolent children in
this house, and I will certainly not tolerate this boy sitting at my supper table eating food that he has no business
eating.” She turned on me. “If you expect to be treated with courtesy and respect in this house,
you’d best learn what it is to earn it.”

I shook my head, smirking. She hadn’t been nice since the day I got here. This joke had gone on
long enough, and this was just another of her tantrums. “Okay, I’m sorry.”

She ignored me, talking to Dad. “You tell your boy he’s welcome to live in the
woodshed until he knows what the word ‘respect’ means and I decide he can come back. Until then,
he’s not welcome in this house.”

I gaped. “No way. You’ve got to be kidding. . . .”

She stomped up to me, her eyes coming up to my chin. “You shut your mouth this instant. You
will speak when spoken to.”

“Come on, I said I was sorry.”

“I don’t take ‘sorries’ from the likes of you, and a decent man has no
reason to be sorry in the first place.” She looked at my piercings. “And you get those things out of your
face before you come back, too. Now get!”

Dad sighed. “Miss Mae . . .”

She squinted at him, her wrath close to the boiling point. “You have something to say about the
way I run my house, Mr. Paul?”

He looked at her, then at me, then back at her and shook his head, the point taken. “Very well.
Ben?” He gestured to the back door.

I held my hands up. “Whoa there. Dad . . .”

Then the broom hit my shoulder and Miss Mae was chasing me out the back door. I made it to the
driveway and she slammed the door shut. Then she locked it.

With the smell of seasoned meat loaf and gravy coming out the screen window, my mouth watered. I sat
on a rusted five-gallon barrel of oil at the entrance to the shed, trying not to die from the heat. Even at six-thirty, the
shed was like a convection oven. An hour passed. Two hours passed. Darkness came. Plates clinked in the sink. Then my
dad came out with two blankets and a pillow tucked under his arm.

I smirked. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Dad. This is ridiculous.”

He stood at the entrance to the old woodshed. The mosquitoes that came with the evening were biting
me. He didn’t say anything.

I swatted at one of the bloodsucking things, pretending it was Miss Mae. “You’re really
going to make me sleep out here?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Tell me one good reason why, and I will. I’ll plop myself right down here and be
a good little boy. I’ll even wear a flannel shirt and suck on hay straw and say ‘Shucky, darn it
all.’ ”

He sighed. “See? That’s why, Ben. You are disrespectful. Even if you
are
joking
half the time.”

“Did you get together or something and decide to make my life miserable? Like ‘Get
Ben’ or something? Jesus, Dad, I hate it here.”

He shook his head. “This is her house, and you’ve got to respect her. We’re
guests here.”

“I didn’t even want to come! You made me! And you want to talk about manners? She
can’t even say hello, and every time I do something wrong she hits me with something! She’s a
monster.”

He leaned against the shed. “This place is different. Different than even I know, and I understand
you don’t like it. But the people around here are hard, Ben, and Mae is no exception. She’s worked
every day of her life, raised a family, and scrabbled together a way of living that doesn’t have much room for
leeway. She’s a proud woman, and I respect that.”

I took a smoke out, lit it, and took a drag. “Oh, yeah, I guess you forgot about Edward being run
out of town because they don’t like queers around here.”

“I didn’t say it was all good, Ben. But there are good things to learn here. It’s all
perspective.”

“Bullshit. I’m done. I’ve tried.”

He sighed. “You’re missing the point, Ben. And besides that, it’s been barely
over a week.”

Time didn’t have a definition in this place, of that I was sure. Rough Butte was an infinite shit
recycler, and I was caught in it. “What point?”

He cleared his throat. “The point that you can disagree about certain things people do, but to
disrespect them because of it makes you less of a person. The people here are good, but they live by different
standards.”

“Stupid standards.”

His eyes sharpened. “No, not stupid standards. Real standards for where they are. Mae
doesn’t treat you with respect, because you know what? She doesn’t think you deserve it. And coming
from a woman who has worked from sunup to sundown for the last seventy-three years, maybe you don’t
deserve respect.”

I bugged my eyes out. “What? Why? I didn’t do anything to her, and besides that, what
does a redneck old woman know about me? What does she know about what I’ve gone through?”

“More than you know, Ben.” He sighed. “You have to earn her respect. I do, too.
She sees you sleep in, eat her food, complain about being bored, and do nothing all day long, and she doesn’t
respect it or accept it. It’s just not her way, and I understand that. It’s part of the reason we came
here.”

I looked at him. “You’re just chicken to stand up to her.”

He shook his head. “No. I wouldn’t have allowed this if I didn’t
agree.”

“Yeah, right. And if you did disagree, you’d do what? Tell her no? Pack up and leave?
Give me a break. She’d whack you, too, and you know it. You don’t have the guts.”

“You’re my son, and I’m doing what I think is best for you. That’s it,
and if you don’t understand what I’m trying to say, it’s your loss.”

I turned away. “Fine.”

He set the pillow and blankets down, then placed a piece of paper on the pile. “Good
night.”

I didn’t look at him. “Yeah, and you sleep good, too. By the way, if I get eaten or
something, give my stuff to the Goodwill.”